ISIS frees 2 women, 4 kids in exchange of captives with Syria

BEIRUT — The Islamic State group early Saturday released two women and four children they had been holding since July in the first part of an exchange with the Syrian government that will set free dozens of women related to members of the extremist group, opposition activists said.

The women and children were among 30 people kidnapped by the Islamic State group in the southern province of Sweida on July 25 when the group carried out a raid that left at least 216 people dead. One woman died in Islamic State custody while another was shot dead. In August, a 19-year-old man was also killed while in detention.

The attacks in Sweida province, populated mainly by Syria’s minority Druze, came amid a government offensive elsewhere in the country’s south. The coordinated attacks across the province, which included several suicide bombings, shattered the calm of a region that has been largely spared from the worst of the violence of Syria’s seven-year-long civil war.

Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the women and children were the first batch of the exchange, and that more will follow. The Observatory said the government, in return, will release 60 women held by authorities and pay a $27 million ransom.

The Suwayda 24 activist collective posted a picture of a woman and four children who were released adding that authorities freed 17 wives of Islamic State fighters and eight of their children. It added that 21 women and children still being held by the Islamic State group will be set free in the coming days.

Suwayda 24 identified the those released as Rasmiya Abu Ammar and Abeer Shalgheen and her four children.

“I am very happy. My happiness is great but it would have had been better had they released my son with me,” Abu Ammar told reporters shortly after her release.

Shalgheen, standing next to her two sons and two daughters, told Syrian TV “we were confident that we will be set free but at some times [during detention] we were so desperate that we wished the ceiling fell on us.”

State news agency SANA quoted the governor of Sweida, Amer Ashi, as saying that the six hostages were freed as a result of the tight siege imposed by Syrian troops on the extremists in the desert area outside the city of Sweida. He said that more hostages will be freed soon.

SANA quoted the women as saying that they lived through harsh conditions during their 88 days of detention, including sickness, hunger and cold and hot weather amid fighting.

Syrian troops have been on the offensive in Sweida against the Islamic State for weeks in clashes that left dozens of gunmen dead on both sides.

In eastern Syria, SANA revised the death toll of Thursday’s airstrikes by the U.S.-led coalition on the last pocket held by the extremists in the Deir el-Zour province to at least 62.

The Observatory gave an earlier death toll of 46, including civilians and Islamic State members.